Review: Introduction to Casefinding

Casefinding is a system for locating every patient-inpatient or outpatient, public or private-who is diagnosed and/or treated with a reportable diagnosis.

All registries must perform case finding, including hospital-specific and central or population-based registries. Although these registries may use different source documents, the procedures involved in their casefinding cycles are similar.

In the casefinding process, a suspense file is kept so that the status of casefinding can be ascertained at any time.

The criteria for eligible cases in a registry depend upon the governing agencies of the registry.

Most government agencies only require malignant (ICD-O behavior code 2 and 3) cases to be included in the registry. However, hospital cancer committees or even central registries may require the registry to include benign or borderline/uncertain cases.

The cancer committee must decide the data set and policy as to whether patient follow-up is done.

Quiz

Go to the quiz if you want to test yourself on the material you learned in this section. The quiz is a self-assessment tool and no records are kept. The feedback will let you know if you have answered the questions correctly. You can take the quiz as many times as you want.